Assessment – what are inspectors looking at?
Sean Harford, HMI, National Director, Education, puts assessment into perspective.
Sean Harford, National Director, Education
Sean Harford became National Director, Education in September 2015. Sean was appointed Her Majesty’s Inspector in 2003. Since joining Ofsted he has worked in school improvement, school inspection policy and organisational restructuring. His previous post in Ofsted was Regional Director (South).
Before joining Ofsted, Sean was a teacher and a successful senior leader in a secondary school in the East of England, as well as associate adviser for a local authority.
Follow Sean on Twitter @HarfordSean
Changes to the school inspection window
...preparing for next term’s inspections and finalising a small number of updates to our section 8 and section 5 inspection handbooks, which were published today. These updates bring some changes...
What’s an inspection judgement based upon?
...not to let this opportunity go by. It’s much better to have an honest discussion about something than try to return to it later. The lead inspector should make sure...
Ofsted’s new arrangements for short inspections
Posted by:
Sean Harford, National Director, Education, Posted on:
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Categories:
common inspection framework, inspection, schools
From January 2018, we will convert a short inspection to a section 5 inspection (normally within 48 hours) if there are serious concerns about safeguarding, behaviour or the quality of education.
Ofsted’s findings about the school curriculum
Posted by:
Sean Harford, National Director, Education, Posted on:
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Categories:
curriculum, inspection, research and evaluation, schools
Sean Harford, National Director, Education, on Ofsted's research programme about the school curriculum and the preliminary findings so far.
Tackling workload together – a new question for staff at the point of inspection
...I simply asked, 'Okay #SLT what's one thing you'll pledge to do to reduce your teachers' workload in the coming new year?’ It heartened me to see some excellent and...
Summer round-up
...ones around myths, which I am determined to banish. Please feel free to ask away! I would also urge readers to take a look at the Public Appointments website where...
Progress, but a lot of work still to do
...to check out our mythbusting content. And you can watch our playlist of films about myths on our YouTube channel. Please email us with any comments, queries or ideas for...
Changing our approach to short inspections: your views wanted
...assessment process. We’ll also take account of cases where a large number of parents have raised concerns about a school. Our regional teams will add their own local knowledge and...
Clarifying primary prior attainment bandings
Posted by:
Sean Harford, National Director, Education, Posted on:
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Categories:
inspection, RAISEonline, schools
It has come to my attention recently that there is some misunderstanding around the differences in the prior attainment bandings used in the Inspection dashboard, RAISEonline and FFT data for key stage 2 (KS2). This was highlighted in Jamie Pembroke’s …